Stereo speakers for all
Here’s why. New York last month became the first U. S. outpost of the backlash against excess: the opening of an American Muji store.
To state the obvious, backlash can’t exist in a vacuum. There’s got to be something huge to lash back against and in this case that huge thing is the rampant excess of New York, where shopgirls stagger along in $1,000 Manolo Blahnik stiletto lambskin boots and young men of modest means think nothing of dropping four figures on electronics that fit sleekly in a breast pocket.
Muji, a Japanese brand that makes a virtue of simplicity, "achieves the extraordinary" through its "deliberate pursuit of the pure and the ordinary."
For New Yorkers it’s a new reading on style and it remains to be seen whether it takes over a city where retail is a religion.
Shown here is just one example of the Muji product line, a plain brown wrapper aesthetic that asserts, "Elegance in plainness...Richness in reduction...Cool in the avoidance of cool."
With living space at a premium in jam-packed New York it’s not surprising that these Muji cardboard stereo speakers would appeal. When not in use they can be folded flat as a subway token and stowed in their own (generic, clear) plastic pouch.
I asked a Chicago musician to assemble the speakers to the 3-inch-square speakers and tell me what he thought. "Fun," he said, but he pronounced the sound mediocre. "I would not pay more than $20 for a pair" he said. (They cost $42, Museum of Modern Art store. And what did he think of the warning, printed right there on the cardboard, "Speakers may overheat and cause fire"?
With typical Midwestern common sense he asked, "Do they come with a cardboard fire extinguisher?"